


death comes on the wings of sleep

by crocodile



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, batfamily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 14:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocodile/pseuds/crocodile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim dreams of lives too beautiful to last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	death comes on the wings of sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Major (canonical and not) character death! Not violent, just referenced. Sorry for any typos I missed; this all happened at two a.m. in some sort of self-pitying existential crisis and was not beta read.

Tim's first and only pet as a child is a little tortoise he finds out on the lawn. He has just turned eight and spends hours pouring over obscure texts in the manor library in search of proper dietary habits of various tortoise species. The tortoise doesn't seem to mind the name Descartes and very much enjoys strawberries and cherry tomatoes, happily chewing away as Tim explains relativity and the laws of physics.

Four months into their symbiotic friendship, Tim has a dream of Descartes old and huge, shell gilded with age as he ambles about the garden. When Tim awakes, smiling at the vividness of the summer air of his dream-world, he rushes to Descartes' tank to tell him the story.

There are already ants eating parading into Descartes' shell.

□□□

Tim has a complicated relationship with his mother.

There is love, but there is a certain distance, the strange air of disappointment that comes from a too-busy schedule. Tim's favourite days are always the ones where his mother bakes cupcakes, dozens at a time in a dazzling variety of flavours. They squeeze on the icing together, Janet always laughing that Tim is more precise than she is.

Stomach full after an evening of gorging on treats, Tim dreams of his mother, old and smiling as she sets a tray in the oven. Her hair is streaked with white in the gleam of the morning sunlight.

Time wakes with the smell of batter in his nose. By nightfall, his mother is dead.

□□□

Somewhere in the midst of cold nights in a quiet house, Tim meets a boy he will never know awake. The dream always begins in flashes of life - hard smiles, angry tears, cuts and bruises and triumph. There are nights he wakes up with the ghost of a name on his lips, only to be forgotten as his mind begins to churn.

The images become solid, heavy with their lucidity. Tim feels the pain of being hit, of being stabbed, of being caught with the edge of the bullet. Some nights, he feels the overwhelming exuberance of being alive, a feeling lost in his own head to the numbness he has adopted as a second skin. 

He sees the boy turn eighteen, the air in his home filled with pride and love. When he wakes, he vomits on the floor beside his bed, and already knows he will never dream this life again.

□□□

Tim is surrounded by superheroes. He has a makeshift family of the powerful and the brave. His allies span the globe and farther. Sometimes, he even thinks he is a hero, too.

But when he sees his father in a Wednesday morning nap, nodding from the audience at Tim's university graduation, he flies out of bed with the knowledge that death is near again.

His father does not die that day. Tim breathes a sigh of relief.

Jack Drake dies the next week, instead.

□□□

Tim never sleeps well. Somewhere between the omens of dying and the things he has survived, sleep seems dangerous. Though he'll never admit it, it is easier to sleep near others, as though the life surrounding him calms his fitful rest. He takes to sleeping on the couch in the Titans tower, and in the Batcave when he's home.

He wakes with a scream in the cave one day, startling Dick at the computers. Dick is as understanding as always, rubbing Tim's shoulder as the younger explains the dreams with tears in his eyes.

Dick promises that the dreams are just coincidences, even though the stories of Jason make him stiffen. Tim tries to take comfort in Dick's soft-smiled confidence, and gratefully drinks the hot coffee Dick presses into his fisted hands.

When Steph is dead in two days and Tim is alone with the false memory of a child haunting his every step, Dick starts watching Tim a little too closely.

□□□

Kon just grins at Tim, floating above him against a brilliant night sky. The moon is a halo behind his head and the air is biting with the promise of snow. Tim is tired, even in his dream, but Kon has mischief in his eyes and Tim cannot say no to anything Kon wants.

Tim awakes to a world that is never as beautiful again.

□□□

There is a point, when the body is slowly dying, that delusion becomes solace from the fits of numbness and pain. Tim slips through fever dreams filled with ghosts. His mother kisses his brow and tells him to be strong between his waking moments of vomiting.

In the middle of fighting Jason as a giant tortoise, Tim sees Damian - hateful, gloating Damian. The kid is smiling, smiling at Tim, a wistful little thing. All around him the air shimmers with heat. Damian reaches out, falters, and drops his hand.

"Brother," he says instead, eyes bright.

Tim tears himself out of sleep and out of his bandages, launching himself off his cot. There is nowhere to go, though. 

Damian already said goodbye.

□□□

Tim never sees himself in his dreams. It is always him watching the life and death of other people within his mind. And he has seen generations that were never born, weddings that didn't get a bride or groom, the just and the wicked and everyone in-between taking their place in his personal graveyard. 

Tonight, he glances at the sky from his seat on the foot of his bed. A full moon. The scent of the first spring jasmine blooms drift in the window. Eyes on the stars, Tim dumps his handfull of sleeping pills and narcotics into his mouth and swallows them down thickly with cold water.

He lays down with the moonlight on his skin and waits to see himself.


End file.
